Falling of an Angel
by Tom T. Thomson
Summary: After watching his brother's die by their own hands, one of the last Ancients flies for the last time. One shot.


He was use to heights. As an Ancient, he flew so high that most people on the far away ground saw only a dot, if they knew that he was there at all. His wings had touched the tops of mountains and skimmed the clouds. Heights were never an issue for him. The rocks at the bottom of the cliff did not faze him either, only for a different reason.

Wind made his hair left off of his blue skinned shoulders slightly as he leaned over the edge. It made its way through the feathers on his powerful wings and caused a shiver to run up his spine. Quickly he moved away from the drop that could very likely kill him. Despite the familiarity with heights, this one made his stomach twist.

He had watched as his brothers had taken their own lives, some by the sword while others starved themselves and others stayed under water after their lungs burned for the lack of air. Some had even killed each other; he heard them saying it was a 'favor'. A favor? Perhaps they knew what they were talking about, but he was alone now and had no one to ask for a 'favor'. A favor of death.

Because of His absence, there was no stone that lay under the sky or water that had not seen the blood of his kind. Some said it was all His fault, but they were quickly silenced with a short slice from a knife. The stench of death clung to the walls of the great fortress like maggots to a week old corpse. It found its way into places that most had forgotten about long ago. It had found the bodies of those who had crawled into a room and locked the door so they could starve to death in peace.

The echoes from the screams of the hopeless had stopped days ago; he could still see some bodies that nature had not yet taken its toll on, bodies with out decay or rot. Some were still fresh enough that no bird had yet started tearing the flesh away from bone. There was even a few who's blood still shown wet in the dieing sun's fading warmth.

Was it days ago? How could the blood still be wet if it had been days ago? He shook his head; delusion was taking a hold on his mind. A kind of happy emptiness had made its home in his head. Again because of His silence. If He were to come back, what would He say to the Ancients' fall? Would He condemn them or laugh? Had He seen this plague of insanity coming?

What ever the answer, he did not care anymore. He just wanted it to end. Just wanted it to end, wanted this state of limbo that he had sunk to just to end. Carefully he glanced over the cliff again. The rocks so far down below caused virago to make his head spin and fear sink into his already broken heart. Would He take them back?

Hoping the answer was yes, he leaped into the air. His stomach lurched unpleasantly in the small moment that he fell before his wings caught him. Unused muscles shaking slightly, he took off and headed east. What he would find there was unknown to him but he did not care, just as long as he was away from this place.

The wind eased his chaotic mind and the cool air cooled farther as he climbed higher into the sky. The clouds held him in their comforting arms and the last raise of the sun managed to warm him slightly. No one on the ground could see him any longer, no one was watching him. That thought scared him; if no one could see him, was watching him, who would come to help him if he was in trouble?

The more he thought about that the more he realized that it did not matter; no one would help him even if they could see him. The humans hated and feared his kind, wishing only ill upon all of his race. There were no other Ancients to help him, they had all died. And He no longer cared, having turned His a def ear to their pleas of forgiveness.

The thought of being truly alone in the world comforted him, but only for a short moment. Only until one of his wings gave out, sending him plummeting to the ground far below. He did not try to straighten himself with his remaining wing, he just sighed a sad lonely sigh as he watched the ground come ever closer to him.

Green patches revealed themselves to be trees and blue blurs became pools and lakes. Brown row became towns. A large black streak showed itself to be the charred grass that had been burned in one of the Sarafan's attempts to kill more of his kind. Nearly a hundred died on that day, the fire burned their flesh just as it had the country side.

All this come into focus very quickly and at a staggering pace. But what he chose to watch in his last moments of life was the water that was just under him. Its surface shown with the deep red and purple that bled through the sky as the sun set. The water use to scare him as he could not swim but it did not any more. Now it seemed like seeing an old friend that he had not seen in years. Which in a way, it was.

The impacted killed him before the pain made itself present in his clouded mind. His beautiful wings, the last thing that still held any beauty, were crippled; flight feathers snapped, insuring that he could not have flown again even if he had lived. The water's surface had ripped open the blue skin and torn muscle, letting the red of his blood mingle with the red of the sun set.

His body would remain there until morning when it will have been washed up on shore. Three little children will find it. Two will be too young to know what exactly it was that they had found. They will think it may have been a bird. The oldest will remember it as it truly was and will be able to tell what he found to his mother, while the younger two will make up fanatic stories of how scales covered its whole body and it had claws that were longer than they were tall. This one would be able to tell his mother that he had found a creature that he had never seen before. A creature that had skin bluer than a robin's egg and wings more beautiful than anything else he had ever, and will ever, see in his life. He will be able to tell her of the way the creature's mouth had been open ever so slightly, allowing them to see fangs that shown in the light of the new sun. And the tears that could not have been the water from the lake. The lost look on its face. The pain. The suffering. And she would in turn tell the Sarafan who would burn the body. The day after the burning of the Ancient's corpse, the clouds were black as soot and the next night it rained as if the heavens were mourning the loss of the Ancient.


End file.
